Ann: Appendix 4C - quarterly, page-96

hi Zandra. Thanks. I thought I’d posted a response but it appears that I didn’t press the post button - so here’s an attempt to remember what I wrote.

My view is that the sales funnel can yield far too much information to competitors and I would much rather not see it published. Prospects/customers enter the funnel at varying stages with varying levels of interest and commitment. One should never assume that one will get 100% of prospects converted, or that they would be converted at the estimated rate or $ value.

When most business do their sales/ demand forecasting they will estimate likelihood of conversion and likely $ value so that their estimates are useful. Clearly that information is somewhat sensitive and shouldn’t be visible to either the prospects in the funnel or your competitors. But without it the information about the funnel is open to misinterpretation. Worse still it is an open invitation to competitors or the prospect. I used once long ago when I had a sales role (which I hated btw) to check out asx announcements as sometimes it would tell me what was going on in a target business. Just imagine if you could find detail about what business was being chased and by whom.

Does that explain it well enough?

p